Harry Potter and the Ring of Merlin
by Katani Petitedra
Summary: AU. Harry's second year sets off with a bang as he discovers that he is not the only wizard in Surrey. But when he and his friends return to school, sinister things begin to happen. Hogwarts may not be the safest place around after all.


**Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all other characters beside Kit belong to J.K. Rowling. Kit, however, belongs to me. So does the oak tree. Yeah.  
  
A/N (important! please read): This is the third time 'Ring of Merlin' has been reposted. You may remember the fic from previous times it has been posted, and it has been almost completely rewritten since then.  
  
This was my first serious fanfic, and I'm really rather proud of it. I've tried to eliminate most (if not all) Sueishness from my original characters, and I've worked quite hard at it.  
  
The only problem I have with this fic now is one that is too big to fix without warping the fic beyond recognition, so I'll ask you all kindly to ignore it. This fic takes place when Harry and his friends are twelve, and therefore in second year. However, the events from books one to four have already occurred. I know this causes a huge 'WTF?!' in readers, but just don't think about it too much and focus instead on the writing.  
  
I've talked too much already, so please enjoy the story. :)**

* * *

Harry Potter soared over the Quidditch field on his Firebolt, searching for that glint of gold that signified the presence of Golden Snitch. Emerald and crimson blurs raced past him on all sides. He was playing against Slytherin.  
  
A flash of gold. There it was! The tiny winged ball sped upwards. Harry rocketed after it. Stretching his arm out, he reached up towards it.  
  
Suddenly, a dark shape blotted out the sunlight that had been streaming into his eyes as he chased the Snitch upwards. It took several seconds for the stars that burst in his vision to clear. Blinking bewilderedly, he spotted the dark green Quidditch robes and the wicked grin that the Slytherin Beater wore. The gloved hand holding the Beater's Club swung backward. Harry frantically tried to back downwards, out of the Slytherin's reach. But the club flew forward and caught Harry under the jaw with such force that he toppled backward, losing grip on his broom  
  
'FOUL!' Harry shouted, jerking awake. It took him a moment to realize that he was not, in fact, on the Quidditch Pitch, but instead in his tiny room on Privet Drive. Harry's face was covered with a thick sheen of sweat. He wiped at it groggily as he got out of bed and exchanged his pajamas for a pair of trousers and a light blue T-shirt.  
  
His beautiful snowy owl, Hedwig, was still asleep with her head under her wing, seemingly undisturbed by Harry's waking shout. And so, judging by the fact that Uncle Vernon was not standing in front of him and screaming his lungs out, were the Dursleys.  
  
Harry, still not properly awake, fumbled around for his glasses and upon finding them, settled them neatly on his face. He yawned widely and looked out of his window at the sunny Privet Drive. Everything looked the same as it always did. Identical house, identical flowerbeds, identical driveways . . . .Wait a minute. Harry started as he saw a glint of gold out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Blinking furiously, he looked again. No, nothing out of the ordinary.  
  
Harry mentally scolded himself for thinking too much about Quidditch and Snitches, dismissing the golden flash as merely an aftereffect of his dream. He yawned again, stretched luxuriously, and headed down the stairs for breakfast.

* * *

Within an hour, the day had already grown hot. Harry walked down the sidewalk toward a post box at the end of the street, holding an addressed envelope and wistfully thinking about how nice and cool the house was and how he longed to be back inside it and away from the sun.  
  
Uncle Vernon had demanded that he deliver the letter. ('Don't stop or talk to anyone! Do you hear?! Just go straight to the box and back! I won't have you slipping to the neighbors about your freakiness and that freaky school you go to . . .' Blah blah blah . . .). He had said that the letter was of 'extreme importance', but in stealing a peek at the address on the letter, Harry found it was nothing more than a letter to Aunt Marge inviting her to tea if she was ever in the area (and simply an excuse to get Harry out of the house, even if the trip to the post box and back didn't take more than a scant ten minutes).  
  
A sudden shiver ran up Harry's spine, cutting his musings short with a jolt. He looked around uneasily, the previously hot summer day now a good deal cooler than it had been. The only thing that was particularly unusual around was a gigantic, ancient oak tree, unusual only for the fact that it towered over the houses with their tiny flowerbeds.  
  
It had been there for as long as Harry could remember. At one point Aunt Petunia had voiced that it should be cut down and have a row of tulips planted in its place, but there had been such an uproar from the neighbors that Aunt Petunia had meekly given in. She had been quite unpopular with the rest of the neighborhood for a while, though.  
  
Harry smiled at the tree. It seemed to watch over the tiny neighborhood, standing sentinel over the houses and their occupants. He reached out and patted the rough bark, but yanked his hand away with a yelp as he felt a sharp sting on his finger. Looking down at his hand, he saw a bright red line on the tip of his index finger. He sucked on it ruefully as blood began to seep from it, feeling very silly that he had cut himself on treebark. But surely the bark of an oak tree, while rough, could not break the skin with a mere touch?  
  
Harry inspected the bark closer, and nearly jumped out of his skin when a metallic sparkle caught his eye. That was definitely not normal. A sharp sliver of gold poked out from underneath the bark. He hesitantly reached forward, and, more carefully this time, began to break the bark away from around the sliver. The bark crumbled away easily underneath Harry's fingers and he was soon able to uncover a small, circular golden ring. One edge was extremely sharp; this was no doubt what Harry had cut his hand on.  
  
Harry stared at the ring in his palm in bewilderment. Rings did not grow on trees. His mind stubbornly repeated this over and over. Then what was it doing in the tree? The only reasonable explanation he could think of was that somebody had embedded the ring into the bark a long time ago and the bark had grown over it, but even that sounded ridi–  
  
WHAM. A knee dug sharply into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. There was a surprised yelp from whoever it was who had just run into him as both of them landed hard on the pavement.  
  
Harry's glasses were knocked askew and his hand, which he had thrown out to break the fall, had been scraped painfully on the pavement. He was now lying on his back on the sidewalk, unable to see properly and wincing from the fact that the other person's legs were digging into his side and preventing him from regaining his breath. Adding to his discomfort, a flailing hand had whacked him in the mouth sometime during the fall and he was now fairly sure that his lip was bleeding.  
  
"Oh, God!" cried a female voice from somewhere above him. "Are you okay?"  
  
Harry, who still hadn't collected his breath, only managed to squeak out "You're kneeling on my ribs!"  
  
The girl gasped, jumped off of him, and then hauled him upright a good deal rougher than Harry would have preferred. The next thing he knew, she had pushed his glasses onto his face and was gabbling an incomprehensible string of apologies at him..  
  
'Geez, I didn't see you at all and I shouldn't have been running so fast and gosh I hope you're okay I'm sorry again I really need to look where I'm going and—'  
  
Harry silenced the girl with a wave of his hand, wincing. The girl looked to be about a year younger than he was, around eleven. She had long, dirty blonde hair that was pulled back into a messy ponytail. Her blue eyes, which seemed even bigger due to the large glasses she wore, were rather wide and curious looking.  
  
Harry started. _The ring_! Immediately he flung himself back onto the ground and looked around frantically for it. Finally, he spotted it. Grabbing the offending piece of jewelry, he straightened up triumphantly.  
  
The girl was now staring at him as though he was completely out of his mind. Feeling a blush spreading across his face, Harry coughed and slipped the ring into his pocket.  
  
'Er . . . hi,' he said, not at all sure what to do.  
  
The girl's suspicious look vanished as she immediately went all perky.  
  
'Hi! I'm Kit. Kit Petitedra!' she said, beaming.  
  
'Er . . . I'm Harry," Harry said uncertainly. His hand was immediately snatched and shaken vigorously.  
  
'Ever so delighted to meet you, Harry old chap!' cried Kit, almost scarily happy.  
  
'Nice to meet you, too,' Harry said, beginning to think that perhaps this Kit was slightly mad. He winced as her hand tightened around his scraped palm.  
  
She looked down at his hand and gasped. "Oh! You're bleeding!'  
  
'Er, yeah, I must have scraped it when I fell down . . .'  
  
'I can take care of that for you!' cried Kit, back to her frighteningly cheerful mode. 'My parents are veterinarians, don't you know. I've picked up a few tricks from them, so I could fix your hand up in no time–'  
  
'No!' Harry cried, snatching his hand away. 'I mean– I'm fine. No need to worry.'  
  
'You sure?' said Kit, looking concerned. 'I really could help you . . .'  
  
'Yes, I'm sure.' Harry said exasperatedly, wondering why he was even having this conversation. '–Er, anyway, I need to head home. Nice meeting you.' Without another word, he turned and walked away in the opposite direction. He had only gone a few steps when he realized that he still needed to put the letter into the post box.  
  
Turned back around again, he walked back towards Kit, muttering 'Right, the post box is _that way._'  
  
'You live in a _post box??'_ said Kit, looking startled.  
  
'No!' Harry snapped, a little more harshly than he had intended. 'I need to put a letter in the post box before I go home.'  
  
'Oh!' beamed Kit, as though this were the best news in the world. 'I have to deliver a letter too! We can walk there together!'  
  
Harry groaned inwardly, but couldn't think of a way to refuse her without sounding rude. Instead he pasted a grin on his face and said 'Great!', even though he would have given anything to have his Invisibility Cloak so he could slink to the box and back, unnoticed.  
  
Kit bounced along beside him, happily babbling about various subjects. She had lost him at the beginning, but he pretended to pay attention and occasionally said things like 'Neat!' or 'That's nice.' He thought she might have been talking about what she'd had for breakfast that morning, but she had mentioned monkeys at some point, so he wasn't really sure.  
  
'So anyway, that's how it happened,' Kit said cheerily.  
  
'Mmm-hm.' Harry muttered dully.  
  
'You're really light, by the way, did you know that?' Kit chirped.  
  
'What?' Harry said, completely bewildered.  
  
'When I helped you up, earlier, I noticed that you were really light. Your parents need to feed you better,' Kit stated.  
  
Harry froze in place and stared at her, his jaw open a fraction. Was it even possible for someone to be that tactless? Another look at her concerned face told him that she was perfectly serious. After another moment of stunned silence, Harry mumbled something under his breath.  
  
'Didn't catch that, sorry?' Kit said.  
  
'Don't have any parents.' Harry mumbled. He really didn't want to talk about it, so he continued walking, leaving Kit, who was standing there and staring at him, temporarily behind.  
  
For a moment he thought he'd lost her, but then she jogged to catch up with him, crying 'That's dreadful! No wonder you looked so sad!'  
  
Harry shook his head, wondering how Kit had interpreted him being in pain from having the wind jarred from his lungs as being 'sad'.'Who takes care of you?' Kit asked, completely oblivious to how much Harry just wanted to get rid of her at the moment. Instead of answering, he busied himself with opening the post box slot and slipping the letter inside.  
  
Kit waited impatiently for an answer, and when it became evident that he was not going to give one, she gave him a sharp jab in the ribs. Harry, who was quite ticklish, jumped. The lid to the post slot closed sharply on his fingers  
  
'What was that for?!' he yelped, rubbing his bruised fingers.  
  
'Well?' said Kit, crossing her arms. 'Who takes care of you?'  
  
Harry opened his mouth to say that it really wasn't any of her business, but was interrupted by a loud shout, which made both of them jump.  
  
'POTTER!' Uncle Vernon yelled, marching down the sidewalk towards them.  
  
'Who's that?' asked Kit, who had scurried behind him at the shout.  
  
'That's my uncle,' Harry muttered back.  
  
'You live with him?!' Kit spluttered loudly. 'But he's–'  
  
'Shush!' whispered Harry frantically, covering her mouth as Uncle Vernon got within hearing range.  
  
'Potter!' yelled Uncle Vernon. 'I told you to come straight back, not to waste time chatting with neighbors!'  
  
'I— she–' Harry stammered.  
  
'No excuses!' boomed Uncle Vernon, grabbing the back of Harry's shirt and all but carrying him back down the sidewalk, leaving a flabbergasted Kit standing by the post box.  
  
Once safely inside the house and away from the prying eyes of neighbors, Uncle Vernon proceeded to shout himself purple at Harry. After scolding him about the post box incident for about ten minutes, he launched into a tirade about how he should be grateful that the Dursleys took care of him and gave him food off of their table, and so on. Eventually he forgot what he had been yelling at Harry about in the first place, so he ambled into the living room to watch the telly with Dudley.  
  
Harry, who had tuned his uncle's rant out from the beginning, went gratefully up to his room and stayed there for the rest of the day, as Dudley was still on his diet and Harry didn't much care for meals consisting of only peas and carrots. He had plenty of food hidden in his room, so he had no need to venture out of it and probably could have stayed in there the whole summer if the Dursleys didn't insist on him doing chores.  
  
Harry stroked Hedwig gently and settled down on his bed with a thick book on the Fitchburg Finches that Hermione had sent him. It was quite fascinating, and was able to keep him occupied until evening. It wasn't until he heard his cousin going to bed in the next room that he realized it was dark. Putting the book down on his bedside table and turning his lamp off, Harry stretched out on his back and stared at the ceiling.  
  
He felt slightly bad for being so impatient with Kit that morning. Annoying and tactless she most certainly was, but she had seemed genuinely concerned about him. Harry's feelings of guilt were interrupted by a tap on the window. Harry, slightly started, looked up to see nothing. Harry was growing more confused by the second, but when a pebble came flying up from below and clattered against the glass, the source was clear.  
  
Harry opened the window and looked down. Sure enough, Kit was standing below, her arm poised, ready to throw another pebble.  
  
'What are you doing here?!' Harry hissed urgently.  
  
'I just wanted to ap–' started Kit, but Harry held up a finger, indicating that he would be down in a moment.  
  
Harry quietly snuck out of his room and tiptoed down the stairs, carefully stepping over the creaky bottom stair. Judging from the flickering light coming from the living room, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were sitting together on the couch, watching the telly, so Harry carefully made his way past the living room and to the front door.  
  
Opening and closing it as quietly as he could, he slipped outside, where Kit was waiting.  
  
'I just wanted to apologize for getting you into trouble,' Kit said, a look of extreme guilt on her face. 'I didn't realize you had to go home right away. I thought you were just being irritable.'  
  
Harry felt a pang of guilt in his stomach, since that was exactly what he had been. He suspected that Uncle Vernon hadn't even been mad at him for taking a long time, just for stopping and talking to someone. He decided not to tell this to Kit, though.  
  
'That's okay. He just yelled at me a bit. It wasn't that bad.' Harry said, trying to sound cheery but failing.  
  
'So, what school do you go to?' Kit asked. 'I haven't seen you around at all.'  
Harry's eyes widened and he babbled incoherently for a moment while he tried to think of a reasonable answer. He was NOT going to say that he went to Saint Brutus's like Uncle Vernon usually told the neighbors.  
  
'I–er . . . I go to a boarding school. I'm there most of the year. You wouldn't have heard of it.'  
  
'A boarding school? Really?' squeaked Kit, sounding like she had never heard more exciting news. 'That's frightfully fascinating! What is it like?'  
  
'Uh. . . Like all the other boarding schools, I suppose.' Harry lied.  
  
'I just got an acceptance letter to a private boarding school the other day!' said Kit cheerfully. 'I reckon it was a prank, though. The name sounded a bit dodgy. Pigpimples, or something like that, anyway . . . Harry? Are you alright? You look ever so pale . . .'  
  
Harry felt like he had just swallowed a glass of ice cubes.  
  
'You mean Hogwarts?' he croaked.  
  
'Yeah, that's the one! Hogwarts!' cried Kit, snapping her fingers. 'That's why I think it was a prank, see, it's such a silly name for a school. Plus there was the fact that it talked about magic and stu–'  
  
'It's not a prank.' Harry said hollowly.  
  
Kit froze in midsentence. 'What?' she said slowly. Harry repeated himself, a little quicker.  
  
Kit's mouth opened and closed a few times, before she sternly folded her arms and positively growled at Harry. 'Explain.'  
  
This was such a change from the girl's normal bubbly mood that Harry felt quite intimidated.  
  
'I-it's a school,' Harry stammered, taking a step backwards.  
  
'Yes?' Kit prompted, moving forward.  
  
'I–er, I go to it. It's a school for magic. It's all real,' Harry said, by now backed up against the side of the house.  
  
'You mean that everything in that letter was true?' Kit asked incredulously.  
  
'Yes! Every bit of it!' Harry stated, wishing that she'd move away from him.  
  
Kit's eyes lit up. 'You mean I really get to have an owl? That's _brilliant_!' she cried loudly.  
  
A muffled noise was heard from inside the house, which Harry, after years of experience, could identify as Uncle Vernon getting up off of the couch and marching towards the kitchen.  
  
'Quick! Under the hedge!' Harry whispered urgently, shoving Kit to the ground and under the bush. He quickly dove under himself as the kitchen window above the hedge banged open.  
  
Uncle Vernon stuck his head out, looked around, then closed the window and headed back towards the living room, saying 'Nothing's out there, Petunia. Must have just been one of that old loon's cats again.'  
  
Harry and Kit crawled out from under the prickly hedge painfully.  
'Look, meet me at the play park on Magnolia Road tomorrow morning; we can talk more then. The Dursleys are sure to catch us if we stay out any longer.'  
  
'Okay, but won't they get suspicious if you leave tomorrow?' Kit said, her eyes confused behind the clear spectacles.  
  
'They don't care where I go during the day, as long as I'm not under their feet, but they'll be furious if they find out I've been talking to someone. Don't worry, just get out of here quick!' Harry hissed, looking nervously at the kitchen window.  
  
'All right, see you tomorrow, Harry!' said Kit before disappearing into the night.  
  
Harry took a deep breath before sneaking back inside. He paused at the doorway to the living room to listen. It seemed that they were watching a late night comedy making fun of Americans.  
  
Harry managed to slip past and run up the stairs without notice as a male voice on the telly exclaimed 'Duuuuude!' loudly.  
  
Upon getting back to his room, Harry sprawled out onto his bed and thought hard. He wasn't sure what street Kit lived on, but it had to be close; otherwise she would not have gone to that particular post box.  
  
It seemed incomprehensible that there was a witch living in the area. However, as he thought about it more, it did make sense. Magic-folk, though they were fewer than Muggles, were certainly widespread. It was quite plausible that there were other witches and wizards in Surrey besides him. The idea made his stomach tingle with excitement.  
  
Kit was certainly a Muggleborn. Since she had thought Hogwarts was a prank, it was clear that she did not come from a wizarding family.  
  
Harry frowned as a new thought struck him. Why, if she hadn't known Hogwarts existed, had she accepted Harry's statement about magic so readily? If somebody had come along and told Harry that he was invited to a magic school (without proving that magic existed like Hagrid had), Harry would have declared them completely bonkers and suggested that they check into the nearest loony bin.  
  
Harry pondered the question for a long while. When Uncle Vernon opened Harry's door on his way up to bed, he found Harry, still fully clothed, lying on top of his bed, sound asleep. Uncle Vernon shut the door and made his way to the bathroom, muttering about delinquents.  
  
Within a half-hour, the occupants of number four, Privet Drive were all sound asleep, lost in the gentle spell of the warm summer night.  
  
Nobody heard the distant, mournful howl reverberating in the still air. 


End file.
